


Words Not Voiced

by whatsherface



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Divine Cassandra Pentaghast, F/M, Ficlet, Let’s do the super sad ending, Not Safe For Feelings, Post-Canon, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-30 18:48:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19409221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatsherface/pseuds/whatsherface
Summary: What if Trevelyan never became Inquisitor? What if he joined as a companion instead?He and Cassandra fall in love, but when it’s time for the Divine Election, Owain doesn’t ask her to stay. What right does he have? How can he be enough? He’s left picking over the pieces, what was said and unsaid, and wondering whether things could have been different.An angsty, angsty one-shot/break-up song.





	Words Not Voiced

You could give up the Sunburst Throne for the love of a great man. For a king or a prince, maybe. Or the Inquisitor, the savior of Thedas. 

But for a nameless mage from Ostwick? Even a veteran of the Inquisition?

He doesn’t ask. He doesn’t want to make her say it out loud. He doesn’t want to hear it.

He already knows the answer, anyway. Knows it like he knows her—her thoughts, her voice, her laugh, every inch of her skin. 

They climb up to the roof of the forge, that last night. The stars are bright in the clear, cold sky, and it’s so beautiful, it hurts. He holds her close, and they dance under that sky. There’s no music, but it doesn’t matter, and maybe it never did. 

They come down and make love in their bed, that last night. Once, twice. It has to be enough. Enough to remember her by, to remember him. Last dance, last fuck, last everything. 

_I love you. Always. Forever._ So much more than words and far less than he wants. 

He vows not to sleep, to not waste a minute of the few they have left on something so mundane. But he opens his eyes to her, already dressed, and failure cuts deep in his soul.

One more kiss, one more touch, before she slips away, down the stairs and out the door. One more, one more, what he wouldn’t give for one more. 

She’s left his shirt folded neatly on her pillow, the shirt she sleeps in, _slept_ in. It smells like her, and he’s afraid to touch it, ruin it.

The workers come in and start their day, oblivious to the end of the world two flights overhead. He lays in what is now _his_ bed, thinking of nothing as the hammers shape iron in the fires below. He marks time by the shadows that creep across his floor, until they dim to nothing and the hammers rest.

“You can’t live like this,” says Dorian, when he comes to pry him out of bed, at last. To pour water down his throat and press bread in his hands. 

He blinks numbly at the bread. _Can’t I?_ It’s like dust in his mouth.

\--

They never really _ended._

Would it be easier, if they had? If they had drawn a bright line? If they had raged and fought and gone down in flames? 

Would it be easier, if he hated her?

He doesn’t hate her. 

Skyhold isn’t the same. Nothing is. But he keeps himself busy and loses himself in work. Finds ways to make himself useful. He joins the new College of Enchanters, moves to Val Royeaux. 

He packs away the shirt. 

He skips the ordination, when everyone else goes. They don’t ask him why, and not having to explain is a small kind of blessing. 

He’s still seen her twice, even without trying. Always from a distance, across a crowded square or in a procession on the streets. She’s radiant in Chantry white, trimmed with red and gold, brilliant and untouchable and forever out of reach. He can’t look away, though it makes the shattered pieces of his heart shudder in the hollow of his chest. 

There will be a proclamation, he hears. Basic rights for mages, a change in the law that could mean marriage and children and families. She comes to the College to announce it. A neat bit of politics, that. 

“Owain.” She calls him, once, twice. It’s impossible to pretend he hasn’t heard. His name in her voice is a blow, and he couldn’t run if he tried. 

“Your Perfection,” he says with a bow, and he means it, in a way no one else does. 

She smiles softly. “Nobody calls me Cassandra anymore.” Her eyes flicker, a little sad. The title is a burden, after all. “I had hoped to hear it from you, at least.”

He clenches his hands behind his back, to stop himself reaching for her. 

“You look good,” he says, instead. “The robes, I mean.”

She snorts. “Do not lie to your Divine. They are ridiculous. I miss my armor. And, ugh, this hat…” She touches it, as if to make certain it’s still there.

He shakes his head and lets his eyes drift over and down and back to hers. “It wasn’t a lie.”

A tiny, pleased smile flits across her lips. Then she quashes it and looks down at her fingers. Watches them twist the corded belt at her waist. “What did you think of the speech?”

Images flash before him as he considers the rights that are now his but meaningless, without her: Cassandra in a very different white dress, a little girl with black hair and grey eyes, full of fight and magic, a lifetime of dancing under the stars. Dreams of the future half-formed, things they might have had. He shuts them all away. 

“I think it will make a lot of people very happy.”

“A lot of people?” Her brow furrows. His fingers _ache_ to brush it smooth. “But not you?” 

He breaks his eyes away and sighs, somewhere between laughter and grief, because even now, like this, he still can’t hide from her. “It doesn’t really matter for me,” he says, closer to the truth. _Not anymore._

He didn’t say it, but she heard. He knows because she goes silent, and her eyes glitter with tears, and his heart— _Oh,_ his heart. 

“Owain, I—”

He cuts her off, for both their sakes. “It was good to see you, Cassandra.”

\--

Should he have asked? 

Should he have _begged?_

Would things be different if he had?

There are songs about them, he knows. About the Divine and the Enchanter, different versions. Sometimes he’s a villain, leading her astray from the path of devotion. Or he’s a hero, noble and tragic, doomed to an impossible romance. He’d rather not be either, but no one asked his say. 

The songs are popular, so he spends coin and threats for the bards to stop playing them when he’s around, which he is, a lot. He comes here to forget. Sometimes it almost works.

He’s seen her before, this bright-eyed enchanter from the College, and they’ve spoken once or twice. She smiles at him over the rim of her glass, when he’s already two or three deep, when it’s been a long time, and in a moment of weakness, he lets himself follow her home. 

It almost works. She’s pretty—too pretty, for him—and sweet heat in his arms. But she’s not _her,_ and when the ready fuel burns away, truth settles on him like frost.

What does she see in this empty shell? What could she possibly want? Perhaps she’s heard the songs. Perhaps she’s heard the good ones.

Well. That’s not him, anymore. What she wants, he gave away a long time ago, no hope of repossession. The best part of him is gone, lives in the cathedral on the hill, wears robes of white and gold. 

“Maybe you should go,” she says, and it’s not a suggestion.

He opens his mouth and then shuts it because— No, she’s absolutely right. 

He dresses in the dark and leaves without another word. He steps out and breathes and shivers in the night air. He could warm himself with a thought, but he doesn’t. Wants to feel the chill, for once. Above the rooftops, the stars are bright in the clear, cold sky, so beautiful, it hurts. 

Memory floods his crumbling walls, spills out into the street where he stands alone. He sees it now, what they were once—sparring in the snow at Haven, riding side by side, fighting back to back. Kisses on moon-washed battlements, in early morning tents, in a candlelit grove at sunset. First night, last night, and every night in between. It’s all part of him. She is. 

And can you forget a piece of yourself? 

_I love you. Always. Forever._ More than words, less than he wants, and all he has left.

He walks home, pulls his coat close and lets his magic flare, but it’s pointless, anyway. He’s already stopped feeling cold.

**Author's Note:**

> Whatever doubts Inquisitor!Owain has about his own worth, assume they’re double as a companion. He struggles less, but also grows less.
> 
> I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but my mind is a wellspring of angsty Divine!Cass ideas. They got their happy ending, so here I am making them sad again. *cries*


End file.
